As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Various components of the an information handling system may include firmware. Firmware is a type of software that provides control, monitoring, and data manipulation of electronic components, such as those used in information handling systems. Like other types of software, firmware is susceptible to corruption.
Currently, typically the only way a user (e.g., administrator) of an information handling system can recover from a firmware corruption is to identify if there was any run time corruption and then initiate a rollback to backup firmware. Such an approach may be ineffective for a number of reasons. First, such approach requires that the user identify that corruption has occurred, which may be challenging in an enterprise comprising numerous information handling systems. Accordingly, an information handling system may indefinitely remain in a corrupted state until the user intervenes. In addition, manual detection of a firmware corruption is often not possible, as the symptoms of corrupted firmware may not be consistent. Thus, the only way a user may discover a firmware corruption is if a system goes unresponsive. Second, such approach requires that a user manually initiate recovery by requesting firmware rollback. Depending on the level of corruption, a user may not even be able to initiate recovery, in which case the user need to initiate a power cycle such that the alternative firmware may will be loaded by a bootloader on the subsequent boot.